


Identity (Meta)crisis

by Skyler10



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Adventure, F/M, Fluff, Humor, Pete's World, Pete's World Torchwood, Romance, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-03
Updated: 2016-10-03
Packaged: 2018-08-19 06:32:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8193832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skyler10/pseuds/Skyler10
Summary: One night, not long after they get back from Bad Wolf Bay, Tentoo starts to doubt himself, but Rose does what she does best. Then a huge alien crashes through the city.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MegaBadBunny](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MegaBadBunny/gifts).



> For Tentoo Day! Inspired by my secret buddy, @megabadbunny, and her art for me. <3

“It’s like phantom limb syndrome,” the Doctor tried to explain to Rose on their third night back from Norway. “I’m me, but missing something. In my mind, in my physiology…”

She was sitting on the edge of his bed in a guest room. Jackie and Pete had set them up in separate rooms in the mansion, thinking it would be best if they all stayed together as a family for a few days, but not quite knowing what was going on between the young couple. So far the two had spent a few restless hours in and out of sleep each night before sneaking into one or the other’s room next door and back to their own rooms before morning. Tonight, Rose had heard him through the shared wall, nearly shouting his way through a nightmare.

“You’re still you,” she reassured him, just the way he had to her all the way back to London. “We’re still us. No matter what changes. That’s another promise I made to you a long time ago. You even changed your face and I still loved you. Remember?”

“At least I stayed the same on the outside this time.” He gave her a rueful smile as she stroked through his hair.

“You _are_ the Doctor. And I’m still your Rose,” she murmured tenderly. “No matter what the nightmares say.”

He nodded and brought her palm down to kiss it. She pulled back and stood, setting a deep crease of displeasure in his brow.

“Budge up then,” she commanded with a twinkle in her eye.

“Really?” he asked in hope. “You’ll stay with me?”

“Of course,” she laughed.

“And if your father finds out?” He raised his eyebrows at her forwardness and raised his arm so she could cuddle close to his side. Despite his question, he welcomed her embrace and kissed the top of her head as she answered.

“Then I can tell Dad I’m an adult, and honestly, I’m surprised it’s not Mum you’re worried about.”

“Nah. Jackie’s thought we were together for ages now.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” she giggled and poked his side, which started a brief tickle fight.

They were exhausted from the past week, however, so it didn’t last long. They collapsed together again, stifling their remaining laughter in each other’s sleep shirts. They lay in silence for a long while, but well aware the other hadn’t fallen asleep yet.

“Rose?”

“Mm?”

“Pete said we’re going to Torchwood to do my paperwork tomorrow.”

“And passport and license and the whole ‘lot. It’s a long process, but I can help. Had to do it all myself, you know. It won’t be as bad you think, you’ll see.” It registered to him that she thought he was dreading it because it was boring. After all these years, all that she had seen and done, there was still a quality of beautiful innocence about her. It reassured him, and as always, he hated to shatter it. But he had pledged himself to be honest with her this time.

“I’ll need a name.” Silence once more filled the night air as the penny dropped.

“But you make up aliases all of the time. Besides, it’s only for legal purposes. Just make sure it’s something you’ll remember.” She was trying to get him to smile again, but he had to ask anyway.

“You…” He sighed and voiced his fear. “You wouldn’t want me to use it?”

“What?” She sat up and read his face in the moonlight.

“To assume the identity of a normal human male. You honestly wouldn’t want that?”

She let out a puff of a laugh, incredulous at the insecurity in his expression.

“Doctor, I want _you_. I love every part of you, alien or human or meta-biological-whatever.” As intended, this made him crack a smile despite his fear. “Growing a TARDIS with you? Defending the Earth with you? Traveling and discovering and doing alien stuff? I wouldn’t trade it for the world. Especially not to turn you into some boring, ordinary boyfriend.”

The Doctor kissed her good and hard and long for that. She settled down against him and he flipped them over so he was on top. When they both needed air ( _Hm. That was different. No respiratory bypass then._ ), he pulled away to clarify a very important detail.

“Hold on. It’s true. I can’t be boring and ordinary. I would fail massively.” He resisted her attempts to pull him back down for another snog and continued. “However, may I interest you in an ancient, mad, dangerous, strange - but surprisingly good-looking - alien boyfriend?”

If she were a literal star, Rose’s smile would have lit up the night.

“Definitely.” She shook her head against the pillow in awe and disbelief.

“So you’re my girlfriend then.”

“Yes,” she affirmed.

“Rose, I can’t give you much, and I’m still figuring out who I am now – new man, me – but I promise that whoever I am, he’s all yours.”

“Funny,” she whispered in reverence. “I was about to say something very similar to you.”

They both yawned, spoiling the romance of the moment and bringing them back to reality. He laid down again, and she invited him to spoon up behind her.

“Sleep now, love,” she soothed, stroking the arm he had wrapped around her.

She wished upon the stars out the bedroom window that tomorrow she could prove to him just how much he was still the Doctor despite what he was missing, and how the differences didn’t diminish her love for him in the slightest.

And as anyone who has wished upon a star will tell you, be careful what you wish for.

* * *

The morning came all too soon with the shrill beep of the default ringer on the Doctor’s day-old mobile.

He groaned and shifted to turn it off, dislodging Rose from his chest and waking her in the process.

“What the bloody…” she grumbled. She grabbed the phone from his hand before he could throw it across the room. “Hello?”

“Rose?”

“Dad?”

“What are you doing answering the Doctor’s mobile? And why aren’t you answering your own?”

“Why are you callin’ at dawn?” she countered, the best she could come up with on so little sleep so soon after waking.

“Right. Never mind all that. There’s a 3956 in Trafalgar. Can you be here in an hour?”

“If you’d let us stay at my flat, I’d be there sooner,” she answered sweetly. The Doctor opened his mouth in a silent “ah” as the lightbulb went off. She hadn’t been putting off going to her place. Her parents had been the ones who had insisted…. He realized she was staring at him in horror.

“What?” he mouthed.

“10 injured, one possibly dead,” she repeated back to her father. “We’ll be there as soon as we can.”

They both slipped back into action mode as if they had never been apart. They rushed to dress, and Rose grabbed them breakfast bars on the way out the door. Her bright blue sports car with the Torchwood logo on the side proved itself to be more than eye candy or the type of present heiresses received on their 25th birthdays. It was _fast_.

By the time they made it there, dawn had broken into soft morning light through cracks in London’s perpetual cloud cover, but the city remained eerily silent. Rose chalked up the ghost-town feel to the early hour and barricades around the area, but it still sent her senses on high alert knowing the square’s usual noise and crowds. 

The sound of crunching metal had them running towards danger, instinct to flee to safety long since dampened into adrenaline and expertise. The rest of her team was already on the scene, warily eyeing something just around the corner.

“WAHHHHH!” A giant octopus-like creature wailed. Rose thought she saw a salty tear the size of a small car slide down the creature’s cheek. All three of its eyes were crying in fear. Empathy sprung in Rose’s heart, but also readiness. Her experience told her a scared alien was just as dangerous as one with malicious intent.

“My, aren’t you beautiful.” The Doctor whistled in appreciation. “Haven’t seen one of these in _years_!”

“You know how to handle it then?” she asked, biting her lip in uncertainty at the unknown phenomenon of nature sitting on several cars in front of her.

 “Of course!” He approached the monster with hands raised and palms extended. “Shhh, oh don’t worry! It’ll be alright.”

At Pete’s signal in their earpieces, the other Torchwood agents on the scene fell back, letting the Doctor have a shot.

Unfortunately, the movement made the sun hit a long tranquilizer-laced harpoon one of the agents was carrying. The creature tensed at the gleam, but the Doctor didn’t back down.

“Hey there, big guy! No one’s here to hurt you. We just can’t have you running about the city.” His efforts to sooth it were lost to the shining threat of the harpoon.

Heaving with terror, the land-octopus began to leak inky-black goo.

“Oh, gross. Do you have to?” The Doctor scrunched up his nose in repulsion, but continued on, which reassured Rose that at least the goo wasn’t poisonous or acidic or something.

But then the inevitable happened: The Doctor slipped on the goo and reached out for the closest thing. By now in his cautious approach, that was the purple giant land-octopus’s tentacle. 

The creature drew back from the Doctor in fear and lifted the tentacle that had been touched. For a terrible, long instant Rose was certain the Doctor was about to be crushed. Then it wailed again. The Doctor had just enough time to shout “Ohhhhh no you don’t” before it took off down the street. Rose, the Doctor, and the Torchwood agents pursued it, but with eight huge legs to their humanoid ones, it wasn’t a fair race.

Several very long, exhausting hours later, they had it trapped, but it wasn’t safe to approach yet either. The Doctor had communicated to the rest of the team, via Rose’s mobile, that the alien would soon wear itself out thrashing about the courtyard it was cornered in. Meanwhile, the couple sat on the steps to someone’s house, waiting for the bloody thing to go to sleep. Their conversation turned back to their situation: new life, new world, new relationship.

“So this morning when you mentioned your flat to your dad…” he trailed off, unsure of where he was going with the thought.

“ _Our_ flat,” she corrected automatically, as if the concept had been on her mind for a while now. She blinked and realized what she had said. “That is, if you want, I just assumed…”

“Of course,” he assured. “Rose Tyler, I’d love to share a flat with you.”

“One bedroom,” she informed him, watching him carefully for his reaction.

“Fine by me.” He waggled his eyebrows, making her blush. “So you weren’t avoiding taking me there for some reason?”

“No! Well, it has been busy, but the flat isn’t… It isn’t exactly bigger on the inside. Or nearly as impressive as the mansion.”

“But it’s ours, yeah?”

She nodded.

“Then it’s perfect.”

She searched his face for any sign of the old “I don’t do domestics” and “Me?! Living in a house?” but finding nothing of the sort in this third (-ish) Doctor of hers, she grinned at him and leaned in for a kiss. Just as she did, rumbling octopus snores filled the air.

“ _There_ it goes!” the Doctor shouted, popping up from the stoop.  One by one, the agents came out of their hiding places and went about their usual relocation protocol.

Several hours and one massive airlift net later, the octopus creature was on its way to a more hospitable environment.

“This little guy needs somewhere cold. Much colder than here,” the Doctor informed Pete and the team. “Any ideas how it landed here?”

“There’s a crash site in Iceland,” Jake pipped up, covered in black goo just like the Doctor’s trousers. “Think if we return it there, we can help it figure out how to get home?”

“Worth a try,” he answered. They boarded the cargo zeppelin and away they flew. At snail’s pace, that is. He and Rose fell asleep in their seats, her head pillowed on his shoulder and his arm wrapped possessively around her. The two were blissfully unaware of the cooing gossip and mobile photos being taken to tease them with later. When the Doctor did wake from his kip, however, it was with disappointment and concern that Rose was no longer by his side. Instead he spotted her deep in conversation with Pete. He made a mental note to ask her about it later, but didn’t have a chance before they arrived at their destination.

Luckily, it was a clear day as they landed in Iceland and located the site of the ship. The Doctor and Jake had it repaired in no time, which was very good as the octopus was waking up.

“Um, Doctor? I think we’ve got a slight problem,” Rose called from outside the ship.

“Yeah, I heard the snores stop. We’re almost through.”

“No, I mean the people. There’s a village nearby, and they’ve come to see the show.”

The Doctor and Jake rushed from the ship to see a crowd gathering. Pete and some of the townsmen were doing their best to keep people away from the creature, but their numbers were few.

“Is that?” one woman gasped. “It is! Pete Tyler!”

“Even the backend of beyond loves Vitex, it seems,” Rose sighed.

“And there’s his daughter, Rose!” another shouted.

“And they get the tabloids.” Rose donned her public smile and waved at the crowd.

“Someone needs to do something,” the Doctor murmured. “Too many of your fangirls and the octoblob will get too riled up for us to attempt communication.”

“And someone could get hurt,” she finished. 

“Leave it to me,” Jake offered. Armed with his trademark charm, he ambled over to the crowd and started talking.

Meanwhile, the purple creature was moving toward its ship, eyes wide and tentacles cautiously poking at the repairs.

“Not to worry, we’ve got you all patched up,” the Doctor addressed the creature. It seemed to understand his meaning and cried out in joy. It clapped two of its tentacles together and patted the Doctor on the head with another. It looked around worriedly and tried to mime something to Rose.

“I think it wants to know if it did any damage,” the Doctor interpreted.  

“You’ve hurt a few people,” Rose told it, “but they will all live. One was touch and go for a while, but he’s fine now.”

It deflated a bit in relief, but immediately had its attention captured again by the shiny harpoon waiting nearby just in case. The Doctor wanted to strangle that agent in that moment. But then the octoblob, as the Doctor had named it, reached out and grabbed the agent around the waist, making him drop the harpoon in the snow. Everyone held their breath as the creature brought the agent up to one of its eyes, then lowered it to its cheek. It cuddled the agent and brought another tentacle up to pat his head like it had the Doctor’s.

Seeing the creature wasn’t hurting the agent, Rose took out her phone to capture the moment.

The creature recognized what she was doing and reared back to reveal a terrifying mouth full of teeth.

“Ahhhh ok, now what?” she asked the Doctor, trying not to panic.

“Oh! No! The octoblob is smiling. Here.” He took the phone from her and switched it to selfie mode. He handed it back to her. “You’re always better at these things than I am.”

“A selfie? The alien octopus wants us to take a selfie.” Rose blinked. “Guess it’s not the strangest thing we’ve ever done.”

“Not by a long shot. Now say ‘cheese!’”

Rose did as she was told and the octoblob waved the agent in the air. With a digital shutter snap, the image was captured forever: the end of the Doctor’s first officially unofficial Torchwood mission.

The octoblob set the agent down and waved to the crowd. It slipped its way across the ice and into its ship, continuing to wave at least one tentacle until it was up in the air, and eventually out of sight.

The Doctor and Rose sighed in relief as they turned back to the crowd. It was twilight by now and they had missed the sunset. Thus, it was easy to pick out the torch-carrying mob as they stomped through way through the snow from the village.

The crowd rustled and stirred out of the moment of peaceful intergalactic cooperation.

“What’s the meaning of all this?” a bearded man demanded.

“Sir,” Pete intervened. “There is no need for a fuss. What you all witnessed here today is strictly confidential and you will be compensated accordingly.”

“Out here, toff, we _kill_ monsters,” the bearded man growled back. “Not release him back into outer space.” Several cheers and sounds of agreement rang out from the mob.

“Not anymore,” the Doctor snarled right back. He left Rose’s side to get in the rioter’s faces. “You see, I happened to check that poor creature’s logbooks when I was in its ship. They’ve been here before, haven’t they?”

“What?” Rose breathed, incredulous as they had no record of any such prior landings.

“It sent back a distress signal,” he seethed to the crowd. “‘The myth is real,’ it said. ‘The planet of the small deadly ones.’ And oh, I can’t think of a better description. Tiny. Destructive. Pests.” The Doctor raged as he saw the torches weren’t torches at all, but oil lamps. The fuel wasn’t kerosene, however. It was something inky and black. The monster’s goo.

“You harvested them for their fuel,” he stated, voice going higher and soft in horror as he caught on. “You didn’t just kill them out of fear, you hunted them. A sentient creature. Smart enough to fly across space to land here, something you’ll never be clever enough do in your lifetime, and you killed it like a wild animal?”

“What else were we supposed to do?” a man in the mob shouted back. “It would have destroyed our homes, our families.”

Jake stormed up to the man who had spoken.

“Why dontcha try helping ‘em for a change?”

A scuffle broke out with the mob on one side and the Torchwood agents and friendly townspeople on the other. The Doctor backed away from the fray as he felt control of the situation slipping from his grasp. After all, who was he to shout with authority here? The word “Time Lord” meant nothing to anyone in this universe. And even if it did, they would never recognize someone like him as one of their own. A “derivative sub-species” they would call him. Galactic codes and even his long history of defending the Earth were non-existent here.  

Rose finally found him on the other side of the brawling crowd and made her way to his side.

“Doctor, do something. You’ve got to help.”

“I can’t. Besides, who would listen to me if I did?”

“No,” she asserted, shaking her head. “This isn’t you. You don’t just give up. You’ve never cared before about who ‘recognizes your authority.’ You just tell them. And for the life of me, I’ll never know why, but it works.”

“What if it doesn’t?” he asked, vulnerability seeping through his guardedness. “What if I’m not enough of the Doctor for it to work anymore?”

“It will.” She was so firm on the point, that he nodded and let his earlier anger back in. Just in time too, as one of the mob had picked up the harpoon and was headed right for Pete, who was desperately trying to stay out of it all, but got caught in the middle.

“Oi! You lot! You ought to be ashamed of yourselves!” he shouted. He found the perfect platform – a large, flat rock – and climbed up. “Look at your children. See the fear in their eyes.”

Mothers cuddled their small ones close to their sides, physically guarding them from the fighting, but unable to keep them from watching and hearing it all.

“Those same eyes held nothing but wonder and joy at seeing this magnificent creature. It’s been awhile, hasn’t it, since you last had one crash here, since you tore it apart in victory? If you won’t listen to me, listen to them. It’s _you_ your children fear! Not any monster!”

Pride swelled in her heart as she watched him reprimand the people. That something that had been missing settled on him now like a ray of light, and she could almost see him radiating with it from every cell. The dignity of the Time Lord that he was so lost without clicked into place.

Rose felt something tugging on her sleeve as she applauded along with the rest of the Torchwood agents and the friendly villagers. She looked down to find a mittened hand on her coat and another outstretched in the direction of her part-alien boyfriend, healing the hearts of the mob and living up to his name. The mittens were attached to a little girl with blonde braids and a colorful scarf. Familiar deep brown eyes briefly glanced up at her and back to the man slowing winning over the crowd with the passion and command and energy he’d been afraid he’d lost forever.  

 “That’s the Doctor,” the little girl observed in awe. She looked up to make sure Rose saw where she was pointing.

“Yes.” Rose beamed in pride. The emotion of the transformation only she could see overwhelmed her and tears sprung in her eyes. “Yes, he is. And you are?”

“Just passing through,” the child answered with a shrug. “Tourist.”

Rose wrinkled her brow and searched the crowd as she asked her next question: “Where are your parents?”

She felt the mitten slip from her coat and looked down. The girl had vanished. Rose barely caught the sight of a boy in a black leather jacket with messy brown hair scooping up the little girl and carrying her back to the village.

“How many times do I have to tell you not to wander off? There’s a reason Dad calls you jeopardy-friendly, you know.” the boy muttered as they passed Rose. The girl gave her one last wave and blew her a kiss. Rose waved back and shivered. Goosebumps rose on her arms and neck, and the air felt funny.

“Alright there?” the Doctor called, jolting her back to reality.

“Yeah, fine. I’ll tell you later.” She shook her head to clear it and caught his gaze.

“Don’t know if you saw, but I rescued your dad from a harpoon.” He held out the weapon for her to see as he approached. “And sent an angry mob home. All in a day’s work for us, eh?”

“You think you’re so impressive,” she teased. But his insinuation made her heart leap in her chest. Was he really ok with this being their life? Torchwood and human-alien diplomacy by day, sharing a one-bedroom flat in London by night, family dinners on the weekends? She had made so many assumptions, she realized. But even if he agreed to be on the team, would her dad allow it?

They were interrupted by Pete calling to the Doctor for a private conversation. Jake diverted Rose’s attention away, needing her to help children who had gotten lost in the crowd to reconnect to their frantic parents. When they were done and only Torchwood agents were left in the area, Pete stepped up on the rock platform the Doctor had used for his speech.

“Excuse me, everyone! I have an announcement to make. Please welcome our newest agent, entering our institute already deserving of many honors, the Doctor!”

The team all turned his way, but the Doctor’s eyes were only focused on one person, the one whose opinion mattered most.  

He realized he was still holding the harpoon. He dropped the damned weapon that had started the whole mess and waited to gauge her approval or reaction.

Her joy bloomed in her heart until she couldn’t resist anymore. She ran to him, and he swept her up in a hug that lifted her off the ground.

“You were right,” he whispered into her hair. “I’m your Doctor. Different, but still me. And nothing is going to change that.”

He set her back down, but she immediately kissed him hard.

“Alright, you two,” Pete chuckled. “Quick debriefing on the way back, then we’ll take you straight home.”

“That’s… uhh… which?” The Doctor rubbed a hand through the back of his hair, not wanting to finish that sentence in case his boss (and sort-of-father-in-law, in a way) asked why.

“Your flat. Not the mansion,” Pete reassured.

Rose sent the Doctor a tongue-touched sinful smile that promised much. When they were comfortably settled in their seats on the zeppelin, she snuggled as close as she could given the location.

“Oh, did I mention?” she murmured into his shoulder. “Our bed is extremely comfortable. You’re going to love it.” She yawned and drifted off to the steady hum of the zeppelin engines and comfort of his embrace.

However, he had a bit more difficult time trying to fall asleep with two very important words of hers bouncing around in his imagination: “ _our_ bed.”

The Doctor re-memorized every curve and freckle of his new life as she slept against him. He thought of what he’d told her only 24 hours ago, about the missing parts of him now that he was no longer fully Time Lord. How daft had he been? Of course he was still the Doctor in every way. More so. Because he was never more himself than when he was with her. He’d died twice before for love of her, and now, finally, it was time to live. Together.  

 


End file.
